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Saturday, February 21, 2015

Impressions #25: Dead Space 2

Some time ago, I had written about my experiences while playing Dead
Space 3 with a partner. At the time, it was free on PlayStation Plus,
so I had no monetary loss from the experience. Going on record, I
said that the game was so terrible that no matter how good the
franchise may or may not have been before it, any interest I had for
the series was irreparably destroyed. In more recent history, a
couple of conversations with friends of mine, who were fans of the
franchise, convinced me to give earlier games a try. So, when Dead
Space 2 went on discount during a sale, I bought it. Now that I have
had the chance to start going through games on my backlog, I went
ahead and played it from start to finish. This week, I talk about my
experience with it.

The
first thing I noticed when playing Dead Space 2 is how the game
benefits from the inclusion on specific ammo types. Due to how
Dead Space 3's weapon crafting system was implemented,
ammunition was universal. Every weapon took from the same ammo pool.
Assault Rifle or Plasma Cutter shots could just as easily be used in
a rocker launcher. This gave the player no incentive to switch
weapons over the course of the game. I had one weapon that I built in
the first 3 hours, that I kept using until the end.

Going back to Dead Space 2, I noticed an immediate difference in way
weapons and ammo contribute to the overall experience. Unlike its
successor, Dead Space 2 gives every weapon in the game its own
distinctive ammo type. Plasma Cutter shots cannot be used for the
Line Gun, and vice-versa for each pairing of weapons. Furthermore,
ammunition for any one weapon was fairly scarce, even if, as a whole,
there were more than enough bullets to go around. As a result, the
game frequently demanded that players change weapons and tactics to
both suit the necromorphs out on the field and the weapons which they
have ammo for.

An
element of resource management is created as a result, and not just
in ammo conservation. Though money to spend on equipment is
plentiful, at least on Normal difficulty, it is no less finite.
Wasteful spending will get punished later on. In the event that a
given player wanted to stick with one weapon for longer, it was still
possible to purchase more ammo for it. However, this would mean that
money is not spent on purchasing Power Nodes and armor. Power Nodes
have two uses. First, they can used at workbenches to upgrade both
Issac and his weapons. Second, they can be used to open locked doors
that contain large supply caches and schematics which unlock new
items in the store. Each of these resources feeds into the other
resources in some way. The need to constantly balance the use of
equipment, Power Nodes, and money is a large source of the game's
tension, which was lost in the translation to Dead Space 3.

Back
when
I played Dead Space 3, my
partner and I talked through almost the entire game. With our
constant bantering, to both coordinate our movements and comment on
the game, any attempt to raise tension was completely lost.
Furthermore, if either one of us died, the other was quick to
resurrect them, reducing the game's ability to provide any form of
challenge. It felt more like an action-heavy third-person shooter
than a game attempting to play with my emotional state. Neither one
of us felt like the game was particularly scary or difficult.

Now, while I would hesitate to call Dead Space 2 scary, it is an
extremely tense game. Enemies can, and often will, come out of
nowhere. Even after a player defeats all of the necromorphs in an
area, more will begin to spawn if they linger too long before
proceeding onward. As a result, the player is rarely ever truly safe
unless they are near a save point and/or vendor. Even when opening a
locked door with a Power Node, the player will often be ambushed on
their way back to the main path. When the need to carefully use
resources, this further compounds the tension of the game. The player
knows that they need to collect resources, but spending too much time
doing so will require them to spend what was just gathered. This
generates a delightfully nerve-wracking balancing act between the
player and the designers.

Even
better, the enemies both demand that the player is both swift and
accurate. As many people are already aware, the primary enemies in
the Dead Space franchise are the necromorphs. Unlike typical video
game foes, they can only be defeated by dismembering their limbs
until they are unable to move anymore. They are also fast, moving
quickly into melee range. This results in a need to move quickly,
while precisely aiming to slice body parts off of enemies. Failure to
remember this will result in the use of copious amounts of ammunition
and health kits. With a limited inventory, complications arise if the
player is not careful.

While not bad for the game, this created difficulty for me towards
the end. I found myself dying repeatedly to the same encounters.
After a certain number of deaths, tension gives way to frustration. I
will not deny that in the interest of avoiding said frustration and
saving time, I began to start switching to easy mode for some battles
and then switching back to normal after the battle was over. I would
be willing to believe that this had more to do with my lack of skill
then the game, but it is nonetheless important to make note of.

Lastly, the levels feel like they had a lot more variety in this
game then in Dead Space 3. Most of Dead Space 3 felt very same-y, due
to the fact that most of it took place in a tundra, while the rest
was in a few sci-fi industrial buildings. Combined with the need to
backtrack often, it was difficult to ascertain one area from another
without the use of the game's path-finding preventing players from
getting lost.

Though most of Dead Space 2 also occurs in sci-fi industrial
hallways, the game does use set design and lighting to add variety.
Medical areas have all sorts of first-aid and medical equipment
scattered throughout the area. Churches and theaters have lush red
carpets and candle-lights and engineering bays will have mechanical
equipment. Furthermore, the games makes good use to lighting by
giving different areas their own colors. With these few additions,
players are given a sense of progress and forward movement as they
continue the game's story.

Speaking of, the story makes a little more sense than Dead Space 3's
nonsensical tale of confusion and scatterbrained characters. The main
cast had a clearly defined motive for wanting for wanting to prevent
the villain from continuing his research. Furthermore, their
relations feel a bit more natural, with both protagonist Issac Clarke
and deuteragonist Ellie Langford go from grudging working together
to something resembling more of a close friendship. Although the
villain's ultimate plan and motivation are at best vague and at worst
nonexistent, the relationship between the primary cast is strong
enough to carry the game's writing.

Playing
through Dead Space 2 hammers home exactly how much of a step back
Dead Space 3 must have been to franchise fans. I can only imagine the
disappointment of people who went from games like this to whatever
they turned its successor into.
That said, I can really see why fans of slower, more tense
experiences flocked to Dead Space. There is a lot to like with the
franchise. What really astounds me is that it is clear Visceral Games
know how to create good experiences. So what on earth caused such a
terrible transition. I would have loved to be a fly-on-the-wall when
they designed each game.